The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (15 page)

Bassano also says that the palace built by Sultan Mehmet had three courts, which were aligned one after the other in the form of a great rectangle. The fourth court of the present palace is really a large garden with isolated pavilions mostly added in the late Ottoman period. The Harem, or women’s quarters, in its present state belongs largely to the time of Murat III (r. 1574-95), with fairly extensive reconstructions and additions chiefly under Mehmet IV (r. 1648-87) and Osman III (1754-7). Three serious fires - in 1574, 1665 and 1856 - devastated large sections of the palace, so that, while the three main courts have preserved essentially the arrangements given them by Mehmet the Conqueror, many of the buildings have either disappeared (as most of those in the First Court) or have been reconstructed and redecorated in later periods.

Topkapı Sarayı was not merely the private residence of the sultan and his court, for Mehmet also made it the centre of his government. It was the seat of the so-called Divan, the supreme executive and judicial council of the empire, and it housed the famous Palace School, the largest and most select of the training schools for the imperial civil service. The separate divisions of the Saray corresponded closely with these various functions, all of which took their original form under Mehmet the Conqueror.

The First Court, which was open to the public, was the service area, containing a hospital, a bakery, an arsenal, the mint and outer treasury, and a large number of storage places and dormitories for guards and domestics of the Outer Service, those who would not normally come into contact with the sultan and his household. The Second Court was the seat of the Divan, devoted to the public administration of the empire; it could be entered by anyone who had business to contract with the council; beyond this court to left and right were other service areas, most notably the kitchens and the privy stables. The Third Court, strictly reserved for officials of the court and government, was largely given over to various divisions of the Palace School, but also contained some of the chambers of the Selamlık, the reception rooms of the sultan. The Harem, specifically the women’s quarter of the palace, had further rooms of the Selamlık and the sultan’s own bedroom, as well as quarters for the Black Eunuchs who guarded the women’s quarters. The White Eunuchs, who looked after the pages and the students in the Palace School, were housed in the Third Court. The Fourth Court was an extension of the Selamlık added in later times, the only structure remaining from the Conqueror’s time being Hekimbaşı Odası, the Chamber of the Chief Physician.

The main entrance to Topkapı Sarayı has always been Bab-ı Hümayun, the Imperial Gate, opposite the north-east corner of Haghia Sophia. The great gatehouse is basically the work of Mehmet the Conqueror, though its appearance has changed rather radically in the course of time. Originally there was a second storey with two rows of windows, but this was removed in subsequent remodellings. The seventeenth-century Turkish historian Hezarfen Hüseyin notes that this upper storey was added by Mehmet to create a vantage point from which he could look out over the city.

The rooms on the ground floor of the gatehouse were for the Kapıcıs, or corps of guards, of whom fifty were on duty at all times. The side niches in the gateway were in Ottoman times used for the display of the severed heads of executed offenders of importance, each labelled with his crime.

The Imperial Gate opens into the First Court, which no longer looks like a courtyard because most of the buildings that formed its periphery have disappeared through fire and earthquake. This was once called the Court of the janissaries, for those members of the elite corps of the Ottoman army who were on duty in the palace assembled here.

The most prominent building in the court is off to the left as one enters; this is the former church of Haghia Eirene, built by Justinian in the years 532-7 at the same time that he erected Haghia Sophia. This was one of the few Byzantine churches in the city that was not converted into a mosque after the Conquest, since it was within the bounds of Topkapı Sarayı. Sultan Mehmet used it to store captured weapons and other trophies of his conquests, and in the late Ottoman era it became an archaeological museum.

On the west or left-hand side of the First Court, between the outer wall of the Saray and Haghia Eirene, there once stood a great quadrangle that housed the Straw Weavers and Carriers of Silver Pitchers. The large courtyard of this building served as a storage place for the firewood of the palace and the buffalo carts used to transport it.

North of Haghia Eirene on the left side of the court is the Darphane, the buildings formerly used for the Imperial Mint and the Privy Treasury. Beyond these buildings a road leads downhill through a gateway called Kız Bekçiler Kapısı, the Gate of the Guardians of the Girls, referring to the Black Eunuchs who guarded the Harem. This road led to the outer gardens of the palace on the slope of the First Hill leading down to the Golden Horn, now the site of Gülhane Park.

A short way down the road a gateway leads to a terrace below the north side of the First Court, an enclosure containing the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, both of them founded in the late nineteenth century, and the Çinili Köşk, or Tiled Pavilion, one of the very few original buildings of Sultan Mehmet’s palace that has not been significantly altered. Sultan Mehmet seems to have built the kiosk in 1472 as a review pavilion, which he is known to have used to watch the palace pages playing
jirit
, a form of polo.

Between Kız Bekçiler Kapısı and the wall of the Second Court to the north there once stood a number of buildings, including a large storehouse, two barracks for domestics of the Outer Service, and a small mosque for their use; all of these, which were probably largely constructed of wood, have disappeared except for some undistinguished foundations.

On the east or right-hand side of the First Court is the site of the famous infirmary for the pages of the Palace School. This was a large building with a courtyard and a number of wards allotted to the various divisions of the school. Beyond the site of the infirmary a road led to the outer gardens of the palace on the slope leading down to the Marmara. This area is still covered with Byzantine substructures, including remains of the Great Palace of Byzantium, the sight of whose ruins had so saddened Mehmet when he first saw them on the day he conquered Constantinople.

The rest of the east side of the First Court beyond the road consists of a blank stone wall with a gate and a water tower halfway along. Behind this wall stood the bakery of the palace, famous for the superfine quality of the white bread baked for the sultan and those favourites on whom he chose to bestow it. Beyond the bakery are the waterworks of the palace, built by Mehmet and subsequently reconstructed.

Just before the gate to the Second Court, against the wall on the right, is a famous and sinister fountain. This is Cellâl Çeşmesi, the Executioner’s

Fountain, in which the chief executioner washed his hands and sword after a decapitation, which took place just outside the gate. If the culprit was of sufficient importance the severed head was placed on one of the two Ibret Taşları, or Example Stones, on either side of the gate, as a warning of what happened to those who broke the sultan’s laws.

The entryway to the Second Court is called Bab-es Selam, or the Gate of Salutations, also known as Orta Kapı, the Middle Gate. The gateway is shown in Schedel’s woodcut of 1493 and is essentially a construction of Mehmet II, with repairs and alterations by later sultans, as evidenced by inscriptions. The chief executioner had a small apartment in the gatehouse, one room of which served as a cell where the condemned man was held before his execution. Other chambers within the gatehouse were used as waiting rooms for ambassadors and other officials attending an audience with the sultan or the grand vezir.

Here one enters the palace proper, which now houses the Topkapı Sarayı Museum. At this point the vezirs and other high functionaries and the ambassadors of foreign powers, who were permitted to ride through the First Court, had to dismount from their horses, for only the sultan himself and his three favourite pages when in his company could ride through this gate.

The Second Court, also known as the Court of the Divan, is still very much as it was when Sultan Mehmet laid it out, as evidenced by the descriptions of earlier chroniclers. The courtyard is a tranquil cloister of imposing proportions, planted with venerable cypress trees; several fountains once adorned it and mild-eyed gazelles pastured on the glebe. Except for the chambers of the Divan and the Inner Treasury to the north-west there are no buildings in this court, which consists simply of blank walls with colonnaded porticoes in front of them. Beyond the colonnade the whole of the eastern side is occupied by the palace kitchens, while beyond the western colonnade are the Privy Stables and the quarters of the guards known as the Halberdiers-with-Tresses. These guards took their peculiar name from the fact that false locks of hair hung down on either side of their face, supposedly to prevent them from taking sidelong glances at the concubines they might see when on duty in the Inner Palace.

The Court of the Divan seems to have been designed essentially for the pageantry connected with the public business of the empire. Here four times a week the Divan, or Imperial Council, met to deliberate on administrative affairs or to discharge its official functions. On such occasions the whole courtyard was filled with a vast throng of magnificently dressed officials and the corps of palace guards and janissaries, at least 5,000 on ordinary days, but up to 10,000 when ambassadors were received or other extraordinary business was transacted. Even at such times an almost absolute silence prevailed throughout the courtyard, as commented upon in the accounts of foreign travellers, the earliest being that of the Venetian ambassador Andrea Gritti in 1503. He writes: ‘I entered into the court, where I found on one side all of the Janissaries on foot, and on the other side all of the persons of high esteem, and the salaried officials of His Majesty, who stood with such great silence and with such a beautiful order, that it was a marvelous thing not believable to one who has not seen it with his own eyes.’

The Divan, together with the Inner Treasury, projects from the north-west corner of the court, thus breaking the symmetry of the rectangle. This group of rooms is dominated by the square tower with a conical roof that is such a conspicuous feature of the Saray from many points of view. The complex dates in essentials to the time of Mehmet II, though it was rebuilt by Süleyman the Magnificent and subsequently remodelled by later sultans. The Divan tower is already clearly visible in Schedel’s panorama of 1493, indicating that it too is a work of Mehmet II, although it was lower then and had a pyramidal roof, having taken on its present appearance through a remodelling by Mahmut II in 1820.

In front of the tower stand the three rooms of the Divan, all of them domed chambers of square cross-section; the Council Chamber itself, the Public Records Office and the Office of the Grand Vezir. The first two open widely into each other by a great arch, being divided only by a screen reaching to the springing of the arch, while the Grand Vezir’s office was originally entered by a door from the Public Records Office.

The Divan chamber took its name from the low couches that extend from wall to wall around three sides of the room. During meetings of the Divan the members of the Imperial Council sat here in strict order of rank: the grand vezir in the centre opposite the door; on his right the Lord Chancellor (
Nişancı
), the
beylerbeys
of Rumelia and Anatolia, and the Lord High Admiral (
Kaptan Pasha
); on his left were the two Lords Chief Justice (
Kadıaskers
), and beyond them the two Lords of the Treasury (
Defterdars
) and the ağa of the janissaries. Other high officials attended as required, most notably the first vezirs, the chief black eunuch (
kızlar ağası
), the chief white eunuch (
kapı ağası
) and the two captains of the Imperial Gate (
Kapıcıbaşı
).

Over the seat of the grand vezir is a grilled window - known as ‘the Eye of the Sultan’ - giving into a small room below the Divan Tower. This takes its name from the fact that the sultan, when he was not in attendance in the Divan, could look out from this window to observe what was going on in the Imperial Council.

Mehmet II originally attended all meetings of the council, until one day an incident occurred that convinced him that he would thenceforth observe its proceedings unseen. This was when a peasant who wanted to present his case before the council entered the Divan, looked impatiently at all the assembled dignitaries, and shouted: ‘Which of you worthies is the sultan?’, which led Mehmet to have the man thrown out and bastinadoed, after which he left the chamber in disgust, never to return.

The building to the north of the three Divan chambers, without a portico, is the Public Treasury. It is a long room with eight domes in four pairs supported by three massive piers, in structure and plan very like the
bedesten
that Mehmet II erected in the centre of Istanbul’s Covered Bazaar, indicating that it was a construction of the Conqueror, thought it too was rebuilt by Süleyman. Here and in the vaults below were stored the treasure of the empire as it arrived from the provinces. Here it was kept until the quarterly pay days for the use of the council and for the payment of the officials, the janissaries and other corps of guards and servants; at the end of each quarter what remained unspent was transferred to the Imperial Treasury in the Third Court. The Public Treasury was also used to store financial records as well as precious fabrics, furs and robes worn by the sultan and his vezirs.

At the north-west corner of the Second Court, beneath the Tower of the Divan, there is a doorway called Araba Kapısı, or the Carriage Gate. This is one of the two main entrances to the Harem, the other being in the Third Court. The gate takes its name from the fact that the women in the Harem passed through it on the rare occasions when they were allowed to go for drives in the city or to the surrounding countryside, accompanied by a guard of black eunuchs.